Pisgah football coach Brett Chappell earns state recognition

Jun. 16—Pisgah High School head football coach Brett Chappell was presented with the Tony Webb Outstanding Coach Award by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association after helping guide his team through some of the toughest circumstances imaginable.

"It's a great honor to receive something like that, especially in honor of Coach Tony Webb," Chappell said. "It's a really big honor to be recognized by the NCHSAA."

The award is named after the late Tony Webb, who amassed a 103-18-6 at Albemarle High School. He also served as the school's principal and the district's superintendent in the later stages of his career.

The criterion for the award is a coach who has "impacted the lives of student-athletes, and students in general, by encouraging them to succeed, helping to develop self-confidence, ambition, a sound work ethic and other skills necessary for success in the students' later lives; a record of encouraging student-athletes to be well-rounded (i.e., displaying excellence in areas of scholarship, citizenship, music, etc.); and a reputation amongst their respective peers and the athletic community for fair play, good sportsmanship and the development of these attributes in their respective student-athletes."

Pisgah Booster Club member Chad Upton has called Bears football games on the radio for 17 years. He submitted Chappell's nomination for the Tony Webb Outstanding Coach Award last year.

"The original nomination I made after the 2021 season," Upton said. "That year, we won a conference championship, finished 10-2, had lost our stadium with the flooding and hadn't played a home game or held a practice in our facility. In addition to that, over the course of the season, we had several catastrophic injuries. Somewhere around 12 or 14 kids we lost to injuries that were season-ending injuries."

To put the difficulties into perspective, Upton described how, on one play against Tuscola High School, two players went down with season-ending injuries.

"I had never seen anything like it... That's the way the season went all year long. You lose one or two kids, and it can change everything," he said.

Upton said that the NCHSAA rolls over applications to the next year if they believe they could be interested in giving the coach the award in the future. He said he received an email asking if there was anything he wanted to add to the nomination following this season.

At the end of the 2022 season, the Bears had just finished their second straight season without a home stadium but reached the state playoffs again. Chappell was also named a coach for the 2023 Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas.

Outside of the honors, Chappell and the Bears had faced more adversity with the closing of the Canton paper mill.

"We've lost our paper mill — our primary employer. That has had an impact on morale," Upton said. "I can't imagine any head coach in North Carolina that has had more working against him than he has. Just losing your home stadium and preserving through that would be enough to earn recognition, but it's been one thing after another."

Chappell was quick to point out that he has a strong coaching staff around him to keep the team running smoothly and successfully.

"Obviously, me being here and representing Pisgah High School is always at the forefront of anything we do," Chappell said. "We're representatives of the community. My name is attached to it, but Pisgah was as well. We've done some big things through some hard times, and I've just been a part of it."

Chappell said he just learned that he would be receiving the award earlier this week before the award ceremony on Wednesday in Greensboro.

"We want to make every effort to be there if we can, and we made some schedule changes to make it," Chappell said. "It was really neat to watch the award presentations. It wasn't just for coaches, but for athletes. It was really neat to be a part of it all."

Upton, a lifelong Bears faithful, said he has been most impressed with Chappell in the way he carries himself.

"He finds success because he does things the right way, the moral way, the way you can be proud of. Watching what he does under this much duress has been remarkable," Upton said. "He worked really hard to build relationships outside of just his program. I know he has solid relationships with coaches across the state and across the region."